Violent Masculinities Male Aggression in Early Modern Texts and Culture [Hardcover]

During the early modern period in England, social expectations for men came under extreme pressure - the armed knight went into decline and humanism appeared. Here, original essays analyze a wide-range of violent acts in literature and culture, from civic violence to chivalric combat to brawls and battles.Introduction: Reclaiming Violent Masculinities; Jennifer Feather and Catherine E. Thomas PART I: 'DISPUTE IT LIKE A MAN': MILITANT MASCULINITIES 1. Militant Prologues, Memory, and Models of Masculinity in Shakespeare's Henry V and Troilus and Cressida; Susan Harlan 2. Marlowe's War Horses: Cyborgs, Soldiers and Queer Companions; Timothy Francisco 3. Cutting Words and Healing Wounds: Friendship and Violence in Early Modern Drama; Jennifer Forsyth PART II: 'THE FAITH OF MAN': RELIGION AND MASCULINE AGGRESSION 4. Virtus, Vulnerability, and the Emblazoned Male Body in Shakespeare's Coriolanus ; Lisa S. Starks-Estes 5. Priestly Rulers, Male Subjects: Swords and Courts in Papal Rome; Laurie Nussdorfer 6. 'Warring Spirits': Martial Heroism and Anxious Masculinity in Milton's Paradise Lost ; Katharine Cleland PART III: 'FEEL IT AS A MAN': MALE VIOLENCE AND SUFFERING 7. King Lear 's Violent Grief; Andrew D. McCarthy 8. Wild Civility: Men at War in Royalist Elegy; Catharine Gray 9. Occupy Macbeth: Masculinity and Political Masochism in Macbeth ; Amanda Bailey 10. Melancholy and Spleen: Models of English Masculinity in Th e Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley ; Laurie Ellinghausen Afterword; Copp?lia Kahn

A strong contribution to emerging scholarship on early modern masculinities, this exciting collection shows how the achievement of normative manhood depended on the performance of violence. In the turbulent social world of early modern Europe, these essays suggest male aggression signified differently according to distinctions of age, status, and sexuality. These compelling historicist readings of male aggression and suffering illuminate l3